Labor has lost control
Posted on Monday, 24 January 2011
Despite Labor’s claims about their economic management credentials, it is clear that they have lost control.
Interest rates have now risen for the fourth time in 2010 and families, low and middle income earners are hurting.
The inflation data that was released on 27 October 2010 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics recognises in part that Australian families are burdened with everyday cost-of-living increases.
Over the past year electricity prices have risen by 12.4 per cent, water and sewerage by 12.8 per cent, gas by nearly 10 per cent, child care by 7.2 per cent, hospital and medical services by nearly seven per cent, postal services by 6.5 per cent, property rates and charges by over six per cent and education by nearly six per cent. They are hefty increases for everyday Australians, who have to meet these cost increases which are not properly recognised in the CPI, as the Reserve Bank has stated previously.
Since the December quarter of 2007, water and sewerage prices in Australia have increased by 46 per cent. In this same period electricity prices have increased by 42 per cent. Gas has increased by 29 per cent, hospital and medical services have increased by 20 per cent, postal costs are up by 16 per cent, property charges are up by 19 per cent and education costs have risen by 17 per cent. All of that is since Labor was elected in December 2007.
At the time the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the cost of living was a No. 1 issue for Australians. Remember his Fuel Watch and Grocery Watch Programs that cost millions to set up and quickly failed? The Labor Government’s reluctance to make hard decisions has only seen these pressures worsen.
The Coalition has never been afraid to make hard decisions. We are the party of economic reform and the Shadow Treasurer the Hon Joe Hockey has demonstrated his willingness to take on the banks over practices that have rightly earned the ire of the public.
The head of treasury Ken Henry made 138 recommendations for economic reform. The Labor Party have now accepted one-an- a-half of them. They had accepted two-and-a-half reforms but thankfully they dumped one—the original form of the mining tax.
This Government talks about building capacity but their definition of capacity is to waste $43 billion on fibre optic cable as part of the National Broadband Network that is going to take years to roll out and will not deliver what they are promising.
The Labor Party may have changed the ‘horse’ but not the ‘cart’ and it still continues along a disastrous course of policy implementation failure.
Whether it is the mining tax, broadband, tax reform, insulation programs and now the latest debacle of the detention facility at Northam they fail abysmally when it comes to proper consultation and implementation of programs.
At Thursday nights meeting in Northam about 800 people turned out to express their views on the detention facility.
Naturally there is a range of views on this decision, but people should have had a chance to ask legitimate questions about such a proposal before it was announced in the media.
What we are seeing is another ‘lame duck’ Labor Government incapable of effectively administering their policies.